Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Annie Oakley Written by Hank Chapman

Atlas had two Annie Oakleys. The original version was very much in the
style of Hedy Devine (who had the back-up story in #1), Millie the
Model, and the other girl features; she debuted with a Spring
1948
cover date, beating Sun Girl, Namora, and Venus to the stands by half a
year. Her comic lasted four issues.

The title was resumed mid-Fifties as a straight western. The covers
were by Joe Maneely, John Severin, Carl Burgos, Sol Brodsky,
and one was even by the interior artists, Andru and Esposito. The back-ups were the
usual western shorts, on which I have no new info.

Hank Chapman's scripts in the earlier Atlas war titles, even when he
isn't credited, stand out with "Cripes," "Holy Cripes," and "Ca-ripes."
Not a single one of those shows up in any of these stories. I don't
know if those interjections struck Chapman as too modern for
a Western, or if the new Comics Code considered even euphemisms too
rough. At any rate, it's the variations on "Oww"—including
"Ow-w" and "Oww-w"—that put me on Chapman's track here. The
Annie
Oakley stories tied in with those war stories in other ways, though;
Chapman uses footnotes to translate Western lingo here and Chinese or
Korean there; and Texan infantryman Battle Brady, in his own Korean War
series by Chapman, uses the expression "Great Grizzlies" that Annie
does here.
Annie
Oakley
Written by Hank Chapman
Pencilled by Ross Andru
Inked by Mike Esposito

2 comments:

Put Hank down for the writer of the two Annie stories in WILD WESTERN #46 and 47, too. The first has the "OWW!" and the second has the "Great growling grizzlies!" expression. Art by Andru and Esposito.